View allAll Photos Tagged gratification
People have been asking me what i'll do when this project is over in 7 days. Truth is i'm not sure myself. It'll be a relief not having to take a picture every day, and not feel frustrated when i feel i haven't been able to find something fresh and original. I'm not even sure i'll keep posting images on Flickr, this project has made me wonder why i make pictures. Is it the gratification of being admired? Or is it because I love releasing the creative energy that builds up when i can't express myself... Wouldn't it benefit my skills if I try to keep my inspiration free from the will to please?
This project has answered some of my questions, but also created some new ones. 7 more days to figure it out....
Emotionally saturated from all the memories, my surroundings start to blur. I find myself in front of his suit, it being proudly displayed in this underground cavern for only the people he trust the most to see, his family. The tears in my eyes are blinding me further. I sink to the floor barely able to sustain my own weight, they say Freeze did it, stabbing him in the chest with a ice dagger, without remorse he looked Batman in the eyes watching the life drain.
The one man that stood up for this city when people like Ra's Al Ghul and Bane terrorized it. Under attacks from the law of the city he was trying to heal he never gave up on them. Never sacrificing his code or morals for his own gratification. Taking in people like me, trying to help them...
If only I was more like him, Batman and not like..."him" the man who..murd'ered....me, I just...he. Deserves it. He deserves. HE deserves it. He deserves to die a thousand deaths and then brought back to life and die a thousand more times!
I need a sign, if you can hear me. I need something...
*A bat flies down from the dark roof of the cave. Straight down onto the case.*
2 of 4
I'd originally had something else planned for my 365 pic today, but do to one thing or another, it didn't turn out. What can I say? It's been busy as hell around this place, and today we had moved a lot of trucks through the bays. I'd taken this at the last minute as sort of a poor ditch effort. All considered I thought I'd try something else today, being as the pic hadn't been what I'd wanted, and the day had sort of reminded me of one I'd written about a few years back.
An old blog post I'd written a few years back. Enjoy.
"The blaus"
originally written May 19th , 2006
Putterin' down York road after a robust day at work, and feeling a very euphoric sense of gratification with myself and my crew this week, I drifted off into a deep inner monologue conversation with myself. It has been one hell of a week, and we'd done it with a skeleton crew. But now, as I'm admiring the windmills on the bench, and the wheat sprouts in the fields, our accomplishments underplay the dead dogged tiredness that was gnawing at the bottom of my feet, and the nagging pain kicking me in the back.
That's when I started wondering to myself. Another useless thought to add to the list of useless thoughts and information, endlessly collecting and clogging up my mind.
By a show of hands who thinks which is worse. "The blau" tired’s or "This day just kicked my ass" tired’s? For the last few weeks they have been pulling dozens of refer trailers off the fleet, and bringing them to us to be de-identified and cleaned up for trade. Typically my job, you could say is really quit physical. I'm always on my feet, and on the move, watching, repairing, directing my crew, insuring the operation runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible. It leaves me exhausted by days end, and seems to make for a viable excuse to do little more then ly around in front of the television set and drink cold lager at days end.
Then there are times when say they pull two dozen refer trailers off the fleet to be traded. The de-identifying process is no big thing, a little tedious, but requiring little physical rigger. A little know how, a little patients, a good eye, and the right home brew mix of some rather nasty chemicals...
De-ided and it's on to the cleaning. A bit more tedious, and by far less physical for me. Before I continue I have to stress that by no means am I down playing the work a professional truck driver endures. They are required to keep the keenest of attention of everything around them, in a vehicle that typically spans more then eighty feet in length, and has as many blind spots as visible spots. (For thou’s of you motorists that have never been behind the wheel of a big rig remember one thing. If you can't see the drivers face in his mirror, he can't see you) but this sucks, at least an over the road driver gets a change of scenery.
Sitting behind the wheel of a run down Freightliner Century for a better part of the day, playing the part of "Drop and hook donkey". The Blaus begin to set in.
After the trailer is De-ided I move it out of the detail bay, and run it around the building to one of the wash bays. Wash the trailer, and again, run it around the building to the wash out bay. Washed out, and it's over to the lot, where I drop it, and hook up another, and repeat the entire process, with very little physical activity detected all the while.
It's probable that the most physical parts of this would involve lowering the landing gear, releasing the king pin from the fifth wheel, and oh yes, flipping the switch that dumps the tractors air bags, and after a day of this, I feel exhausted. "The Blaus" .
How does one explain that to the wife, well enough to justify sweats, beer, and televison? "Baby bear, I'm just to tired to mow the lawn tonight, I had to spend the entire day, in a spacious, all though be it ugly, air conditioned environment, with a cold beverage at my beacon, and you know, sometimes the radio just didn't play a song I liked. My radio station changen' finger is spent".....
Well needless to say, the lawn is mowed, and I'm left to ponder...Which is worse. Blaus or Ass kickedness tired?
Static
Wednesday, August 27th. 2008
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Sono stato lontano da Flickr ultimamente (ma non dalla Fotografia).
In questo periodo mi sono chiesto se, considerando che il “tempo” è una materia che scarseggia nel mio magazzino, avesse o meno senso rimanere da queste parti e, in caso affermativo, quale fosse.
Mi sono domandato se avrei dovuto continuare ad “alimentare” il mio account o se avrei dovuto smettere di farlo.
O magari se sia meglio cancellarlo, definitivamente e abbandonare Flickr.
Nel fare le mie considerazioni non ho potuto evitare di riflettere su alcuni aspetti che mi infastidiscono, riconducibili alla sterilità di alcuni meccanismi di Flickr (gli inviti a pioggia, i commenti standardizzati, le icone ipervitaminizzate e scintillanti, i gruppi a “commento obbligato” e via andare...).
Ho anche considerato anche le indiscutibili positività.
Su Flickr, se si vuole, si può imparare molto, si può scoprire la straordinaria varietà dei generi fotografici e la qualità di molti fotografi (spesso non “pro”), si possono scambiare opinioni con persone di diverse nazioni, di diverse culture.
Si possono stringere amicizie .... che da virtuali, a volte, diventano reali.
Dopo avere soppesato il tutto ho deciso di rimanere, ma in modo diverso.
E’ questo il motivo per cui ho cancellato tutto il mio stream per ripartire da capo con nuovi propositi, questi:
1.pubblicherò solo foto il più possibile coerenti col mio percorso fotografico e con i temi che meglio possono rappresentarlo (senza vietarmi, se del caso, di postare di nuovo anche foto caricate in precedenza).
2.cercherò di accettare solo quegli inviti dove io scorga un senso tra la filosofia del gruppo e la foto invitata
3.cancellerò il “superfluo” dai commenti
4.ridurrò il numero dei miei contatti, dedicando a quelli che rimarranno più attenzione
5.farò tutto questo senza fretta o convulsione
Regole semplici pensate con lo scopo di trarre maggior piacere nel rapportarmi a questo pazzo mondo virtuale e di prestare maggior rispetto verso chi avrà ancora voglia di seguirmi.
La scelta di Nina, non è casuale.
E' uno dei miei modelli umani prediletti (oltre che uno dei migliori umani che io conosca)
Con una sua foto avevo iniziato due anni fa il mio stream su Flickr, con una sua foto riparto.
Mario
***
I've been away from Flickr recently (but not far from Photography).
During this period I wondered if, taking into account my shortage of free time, there was still a sense to be a regular user of this site.
Therefore I ask myself whether I would have or not to continue the feeding of my account or maybe if I would have to delete it.
I admit, I’m annoyed by several Flickr’s downsides (standard comments, glittering and huge icons, “post x comment y” groups, “blind” invitations etc.) but, on the other, hand I’m the first witness of its benefits.
If you want, you can learn so much attending Flickr: you can discover the variety of styles and the extraordinary quality of many photographers (maybe “no-pro”...), you may exchange your opinions with people of different nations and cultures.
You can find friends, discovering that, sometime, a virtual friendships becomes real.
So .... I decided to stay, but in a different manner.
This is the reason why I erased all the pictures of my stream.
My new start provides new principles, namely:
1.I’ll post only photos representing, to the best I can , my idea of photography (even re-posting old ones, maybe)
2.I will accept only invitations for groups where there’s a “mood” consistent with the photo being invited
3.I’ll erase the “superfluous” from comments
4.I’ll reduce the number of contacts, but I’ll dedicate more care to those which will remain
5.I will do all the above ... just taking my time
Simple rules, addressed to maximize my gratification on this “place” and to pay more attention to my remaining followers, if any...
Set of this picture is not by accident: two years ago my stream on Flickr started with a picture of Nina, one of my favorite human models (and one of the best umans I know, generally speaking) , I guess she's perfect for the restart.
Mario
French photo.
French actor and stage director Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred during the 1960s and 1970s in many films by famous French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War. The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted director Roger Blin with the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor. Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958). A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969). Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s. At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“ Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing. Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures. More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin. In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot, and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener. He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg. Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985). On television, he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre, he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris. His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu, and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816. Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War. In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier. Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles. His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011). During his long career, Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best Director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters). Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Today, 13May, being the mother's day, I decided to upload the phtopgrapgh of mother - She was a splendid lady who raised us five brothers from a very meagre salary of of our father who chose the right path even being in Police and never allowed any gratifications in our house. Though she left us a decade ago, I can still feel her by my side - her warmth and affection, love and care - may her soul rests in peace in heavens - Ameen
Before I was myself you made me, me
With love and patience, discipline and tears,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,
Allowing me to sail upon my sea,
Though well within the headlands of your fears.
Before I was myself you made me, me
With dreams enough of what I was to be
And hopes that would be sculpted by the years,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,
Relinquishing your powers gradually
To let me shape myself among my peers.
Before I was myself you made me, me,
And being good and wise, you gracefully
As dancers when the last sweet cadence nears
Bit by bit stepped back to set me free.
For love inspires learning naturally:
The mind assents to what the heart reveres.
And so it was through love you made me, me
By slowly stepping back to set me free.
We hosted an absolutely wonderful event in our bookshop recently, with storyteller Mara Menzies, who had adapted her own storytelling performance into a novel, Blood and Gold, which draws on her Kenyan and Scottish roots, history and mythology, exploring family, history, colonialism and more through various lenses.
Mara treated us to some of her live storytelling, which was just a delight to experience. Much as I am forever in love with the written word, I'm always aware the roots of the modern books (and plays and films and other media) run back millennia to oral storytelling.
Long, long before even the most ancient stories we have written down, such as Gilgamesh, there were storytellers talking, acting and singing and dancing these tales, each putting their own spin on them. Some would have been professional storytellers like Mara, others just the person in a village or small, wandering tribe, who had the gift and knowledge, and would spin them around a flickering camp fire at night to their small groups.
We have aways told stories, it's part of the spiritual element of our DNA as humans, and it's something that is still wonderful and thrilling and magical to experience, even in an age of instant digital gratification or giant screen entertainment or shelves full of books on every subject.
Mara's book Blood and Gold is published by Birlinn, and you can follow her on Twitter twitter.com/marastoryteller She may be bringing her performance back to the Edinburgh Fringe next year, if she does I highly recommend catching it.
Scraps have never been happier than in this cute and quirky tote! Pieced and quilted at the same time, we'll whip it up fast in this fun workshop. Bonus! It even has pen pockets! A great project for a confident beginner or an instant gratification project for a more experienced sewer.
Quilt-as-you-go Tote Class
Toronto, ON
The gratification, vanity and obsession with the attributes of the self. The denial of social life justified by the preference of conversing with the self. The belief that I’m the most interesting human being there is. The mirror as a sex symbol and thought, as a way to escape the density, carnality and weight of the third dimension.
acrylic on canvas, 80x80 cm
it was love at first sight. “take me, take me with you” she
whispered softly…
lol have a wonderful day. thanks for stoppin' by. cheers!
a little something for your listening pleasure;
Created at The Regency, Laguna Woods, California. © 2013 All Rights Reserved.
My images are not to be used, copied, edited, or blogged without my explicit permission.
Please!! NO Glittery Awards or Large Graphics...Buddy Icons are OK. Thank You!
1. Glitter, 2. Beggar beads, 3. Breakfast, 4. Roof tiles, 5. Bottle, 6. Instant gratification, 7. Beaded fringe, 8. Shadow, rust, fence,
9. Paint peel, 10. Pinecone scales, 11. Kiki and a little lichen, 12. Sunrise from my balcony, 13. Postcard from Firenze, 14. Caffeine,
15. Coffee please, 16. Crocheted pouch, 17. Pillow, 18. Real rust, 19. Travel mug, 20. T-shirt, 21. Iridescent rust, 22. Stoneware rustract, 23. Hexagon, 24. Pentagon, 25. Detail, 26. Giant bird of paradise stem, 27. Bead necklace, 28. Thanksgiving Day dawn, 29. Rusty sun, 30. Rock Art
Another of my stage shots. Ecstasy is something we hardly ever experience. There are levels of happiness - even joy, which are more or less commonplace. Ecstasy implies a level of pleasure way above that available merely from the gratification of the senses.
No light meter, no prism, no rangefinder. No ground glass, just two tiny finders for portrait or landscape orientation. No shutter button: it's a lever. No zoom, no preview, no instant gratification.
And no batteries. The only thing that powers this camera is the will of your hand, and your mind. There are no aids or distractions or scapegoats; nothing to go to but yourself when the frame goes bad.
Now it's just you: You and your camera. Your brilliance, and its genius in engineering. No delay, no waiting for the memory to load. If the people have the power, then this is their camera.
It is photography in its purest form. Simplicity at its finest.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" -Leonardo da Vinci
Voigtlander Bessa
-----Best viewed on black-----
Pentax P30t w/ 50mm f/2 Rikenon
Portra 400
Cropped in Picasa
Casbah Sadomasochism Fetish Club Philadelphia 1994
Sadomasochism, a subset of BDSM, is the giving or receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. Wikipedia
INTERVIEW WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHER:
Craig, your one of the MOST successful photographers I know and on flickr as well as in Pittsburgh. We're all dying to know, how did it all start?
As far as I can remember it was my mother & father who got me hooked on photography, maybe when I was as young as 6 or 7…they bought me my first camera, a Kodak 110 film camera, and I started snapping images of everything I saw. I can remember being the photographer for my grade school yearbook, and in high school I took a few photography classes and shot for the school just about every kind of event you can imagine using a Pentax K1000 SLR which really taught me how to use a manual camera with great ease…I can remember that huge light meter needle flying up and down all the time in the viewfinder. In college I was deeply addicted to photography and photojournalism. I began learning about such icons of photography such as Eugene Smith, Esther Bubley, Dorothea Lange, Mary Ellen Mark and Diane Arbus to name a few from a mentor, a professor, who had me in the darkroom till 2-3 a.m. every night, and he had me out in the street documenting people and putting together photo essays for exhibition. This professor also had me out the door with diploma in hand pursuing assignments shooting concert photography and putting together my own exhibitions.
Did you go to a school for photography and has photography always been a passion for you?
I have never trained professionally, that is attend a school for photography and obtained a specific degree, but I did learn the basics of exposure, composition, etc. in high school and college and in various seminars and classes. It was my college professor/mentor who really sat me down and exposed me to photojournalism, writing & how to ask the right questions while listening to your subjects, how to be objective when shooting a particular event of happening…I have always relied on educating myself on technique, asking other photographers how they shot a particular image, the settings they used and the point of view they took. I read just about every photography-orientated magazine or periodical I can, I utilize such fine resources as the Silver Eye on the South Side of Pittsburgh when I am able, go to lectures by photographers who’s names are quite memorable, and some that are not so famous but have such incredible talent that their opinions and knowledge are worth seeking out. Photography is not only a passion for me it’s a complete addiction. I carry a camera with me 99.9% of the time. When I head to the office I have a DSLR slung over my shoulder, I take it to lunch with me, if I head to Bloomfield to pick-up take out for dinner I have a camera with me, if I am headed to another city with friends to see a concert I have a camera with me, I constantly go to photography exhibition openings to see who’s new and what style of images are out there to admire and learn from, I collect images of friends and photographers I admire, I have books, magazine that fill up my house that center around photography…you can say I am slightly addicted, yep, I got the bug.
The Street Portrait is your Signature work! How did you become so passionate for it?
I am a people-person, I am incredibly social, I have always been that way since I was a young kid, I have never been shy, I never hesitate to introduce myself when in a room of people I don’t know…I have always been intrigued by people, their habits, what they do for fun, where they work, who their friends are (which is always a good measure of what kind of person someone is) what their pain might be, what their hopes are and how they arrived at he point they are in their lives…but moreover, I have an addiction for common people, strangers I meet while out in the street, and since I have my camera with me all the time I began photographing and documenting people who I call “my celebrities” probably in 1990, everyday people who seemingly most people would never notice or take the time to speak with, and most times I am drawn towards to those people who lives are the streets. I am deeply passionate about the plight of the homeless in our country and always take the time to introduce myself and my camera to anyone I meet living out on the street, for those individuals rarely get the respect they deserve from those who pass by. To me they are some of the most beautiful people; they are brutally honest, incredibly down to earth and have such an incredible amount of personality and character that they are my obvious choice for subject mater. I find myself fascinated by the human condition, focusing on the social documentary style of photography and in doing so I feel it’s critical to always speak with and listen to anyone I meet on the street, I believe I cannot fully understand someone and portray them as they would want to appear in a photograph unless I know who they are and what made them so interesting to me that I stooped and took the time to introduce myself and the camera. Everyone has a story worth telling, has a face worth documenting…the “pretty, famous people” are not relevant to me in most ways, for they seek out the publicity and the paparazzi for their own gratification and self-serving purposes, but the common person is someone I relate to, someone a majority of people can identify with, so they are my subject matter of choice and will always remain the focus of my attention and my lens.
Your profile on Flickr mentions that you were once a serious professional. Can you explain more about that?
Out of college I started to shooting concert photography for a few magazines and publicists, I had a few successful solo exhibitions and even attempted to shoot for a local paper, but I must admit I am not one to shoot what editors or publicists tell me to shoot, I have always been my own person, and being the middle child I am a bit of a rebel who resisted authority and I had issues with being instructed what to photograph so I realized that I could never work for a newspaper editor who only had one particular point of view, or wanted to me shoot only what she/he wanted me to shoot. I need the freedom that I have always enjoyed when shooting, granted, I have been able to adhere to certain photo essays that were assigned to me but I have always utilized my artistic freedom with the interpretation and orientation I took in those assignments. I just feel more at ease being a loner, shooting by myself that is, without a specific direction in the photography & subject matter that I shoot. If I head out with only a certain set of parameters in mind of what to present I end up shooting the worst photos of my life, but when I head out with absolute freedom and no limits I tend to produce the results that I desire and what others expect.
What are your crowning achievements over the years both with photography and personally?
Being published in Popular Photography & Imaging magazine really blew me away, that’s the bible of popular photography to me and knowing my images were published in that magazine really had my head in the clouds. Having an international publishing company, AVA Publishing, contact me and having Kathy Joseph, a respected and well-known photography writer and “expert” choose my images for a book focused on Street Portraiture
( www.avabooks.com.sg/avauk/details.php?id=25 )
was a crowing achievement, that book was published all over the world and is also used as an instruction manual for those learning the art of photography. When my copies of the finished book arrived I could not wait to give one to my mother and father, to show them the results of what they had really started, my passion for photography. Being published by the Oxford University Press in New York, the largest university press in the world, really provided a sense of accomplishment for me and lastly, just having people I know and don’t know ask me for prints of my images has always been a humbling experience, that’s something I cherish when it happens, for my images are not those pretty shots of flowers and sunsets that anyone can hang in their house and adore, my images contain a piece of me and rarely present themselves well amidst a collection of still life objects or shots of incredible vistas, so for someone to truly desire my work is an achievement I always look back upon and enjoy as a personal success.
Can you remember what your first true print you produced is of?
I have made too many prints since first taking up photography as a serious venture, but I do remember the first print I made that had me realizing that I had a passion for photography and thought I’d make it my life’s work at some point…it’s a street portrait of a homeless person I met and shot in downtown Pittsburgh, PA, it’s a subject, a face, that remains indelible in my memory to this day and I imagine it will last forever, I can recall our conversation like it happened 5 minutes ago. It hangs on my wall at home and means more to me than anything I own. If there was a fire and I had to grab only one thing to save it would be that print, everything else can be replaced, it’s more than just a possession to me…
How has your work changed over the years from that first print to now?
Not really, I have progressed in terms of the physical darkroom and now the digital darkroom with Photoshop and with the technical aspects of getting the ‘right shot” but my “style” is still the same…I shoot full frame, I cannot remember the last time I cropped a shot, I tend to compose in the camera shooting multiple exposures that are bracketed and from various points of view, I don’t like to remove or add anything that was not in the original frame, I am not a huge fan of digital processing that makes an image not what it was when I shot it, I tend to get really close when shooting a subject and always inform my subjects that if I get to close it’s just the way I like to shoot, I am a very simple person when it comes to matting & framing, I like white mates, simple no-frills black metal frames, I don’t get fancy with my equipment nor with my presentation, no hocus-pocus for me, just the image and the context in which it was shot is important to me, it’s who I am as a person, what you see is what you get. Not to say that I don’t admire others who do the opposite, I appreciate all forms of photography and the images that are presented and I would never tell someone to do what I do or not follow the path that works for them, I just have my own way of doing things, my own path I have to follow and I would never consider doing anything differently to please anyone but myself, for photography is a deeply personal thing for me and I hope that comes across in the images someone sees.
What was your first showing and how did you get it?
I had a solo exhibition of black & white silver gelatin prints while in college, a photo essay I did on a anti-abortion protest that I stumbled across while at home in the suburbs of the North Hills outside Pittsburgh, PA. 10 prints that my college professor/mentor helped me put together and exhibit. Imagine that exhibition shown at a Catholic college, which it was, and the reactions I got from people who viewed it, it was something I will never forget.
Nikon announced they are finished making film based SLRs. Kodak announced no more black and white photo paper for the darkroom processing. What are your feelings about the extinction of film thanks to the digital revolution?
I love film, I love the way a silver gelatin print presents itself, the tonal range, the textures, the soul that a print has that was shot on film. I still use a Nikon FM2 that my mother and father bought me while in college, and a workhorse of a SLR, a Nikon F4…I even use my Pentax K1000 from time to time…I look forward to hearing the film advance in the camera back, knowing that I may have shot the frame correctly or mucked up the exposure and missed a once in a lifetime shot because I did not have the proper settings, that knowledge that technical expertise and the right subject mater have to come together and happen is something that still intrigues me…I have a refrigerator right now that has 12 rolls of undeveloped film in it, I have 16 rolls of TMAX b&w film (my all-time fave film) in my freezer waiting for me to load and shoot. But, I do recognize the advantages that the digital SLR presents for the photographer. I took the plunge last year and bought a Nikon D70, and then made the switch to a Canon DSLR and have invested in Canon lenses for my DSLR. I love the ability to fire off hundreds of images to a compact flash card and not worry about missing shot, mucking up the exposure, I find myself completely immersed in digital photography now reading whatever I can about processing images in Photoshop and the improvements in gear and lenses. It’s the future that is happening now and I realize that film and SLR’s are not being produced as they once were, I realize that film is quite expensive and becoming a dinosaur, that having a roll of film processes or finding a darkroom to develop it in is a hard thing to do. But I will never abandon film or my SLR’s, I will shoot film till they pry the SLR from my hand or there is no more film left to shoot. One detraction for me in terms of digital photography, as I once used to spend hours upon hours breathing in stop bath and living in the red light of the traditional darkroom I know find myself spending hundreds of hours in front of my PC, staring at the Trinitron monitor, losing track of time…I may sit down after work with the intent to work on one specif image in Photoshop and find myself losing track of time and realizing it’s 4 a.m. and I have to be in the office at 8 a.m. for a meeting…digital photography sets me off into a trance at time, shooting film was always more of a chore that I looked forward to doing, took the time to do correctly and now with digital photography sometimes I think it’s just too damn easy, if you know what I mean.
Craig, You make beautiful images of people that touch the hearts of all who view them. But you do more than shoot some homeless person with a telephoto lens from across a street. You actually go up and meet them, get their name and their story, why?
Mainly because I never want to treat a person, any person no matter their social class or standing or position in life, as merely an object…I know each one of us has an intrinsic value that 99.9% of the people who pass by never see or realize, nor really have any interest in finding out about, that is what I seek to uncover and reveal, the human condition and spirit that is so remarkable in all of us. Uncover that part of people, common people in particular, that needs to be appreciated and celebrated, and I do that in a photograph and in the commentary I lend to every shot I have always been taught “never judge a book by its cover” and I will never assume or judge someone just because they live in a million dollar house or in an alley, I want to know who some is, understand what makes them unique. Please do not think I discontent street photography where the subjects had no knowledge their image and presence was being documented in a photograph, that’s not the case, it’s just I do not find myself being to able to spy on people with a telephoto lens and shoot their picture, for me its simply a random photo that I’ll never visit or publish in any form, but what others find value in is fine with me. I will give an example, I care deeply about how street people are portrayed, and it pains me to see images of homeless people let’s say asleep, on a park bench or in an alley or street, attempting to find any privacy and dignity in some form or maybe they are just trying to actually sleep where they can find a place to do so, and someone feels as if that is a portrait of that individual, for me there’s no human spirit rendered, there’s no character revealed, for me is a bit exploitative, and I take exception ot images like that. I know other photographers may find it hard to approach people and snap their image, maybe they are shy or it’s just not their “bag”, it’s easier for them to snap images of people in public w/out even taking the time & effort to introduce themselves and strike up a conversation and ask to introduce their camera into the meeting, but I cannot find myself clinging to a photo of a person in public who would not want themselves portrayed as such or seen as they would not want to be portrayed…once again, I would never tell anyone what to do, photograph or publish, but I would never act as such, it’s just not “me”, and I find value in a street portrait where there’s an intimacy between the subject and the shooter, and it’s that intimacy, that trust and understanding that I seek to present in every street portrait I shoot.
Have to know how you go turned on to flickr and when did you start?
Myla Kent from Seatlle www.flickr.com/people/mylakent/
Myla is a woman I befriended though my old photoblog/web site quite some time ago, it was she who sent me an email in April of 2004 letting me know about this new web site called “Flickr” and she invited me to join when the web site was in its infancy. I joined, uploaded an image or two and lost focus, but returned to Flick with a zeal and passion after I started discovering all the incredible images and the people who shot them. Someone gave me a Pro Account one day because that person thought of all people he knew that I deserved one and should use it to its fullest extent and limits. I still send Myla messages and emails thanking her for introducing me to Flickr, I hope to finally meet her in person this summer when I travel to the West Coast to see a person I befriended thorugh Flickr in San Francisco, I would like to catch a flight to Seatlle as well to meet the person who really caused my presence on Flickr, Myla Kent.
What is your most popular Image on flickr? (provide link to that image)
www.flickr.com/photos/btezra/11114589/in/set-889254/
I always have a camera with me no matter where I go and I went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game against the Cleveland Indians a few summers ago and happened to shoot an image of the ballpark in the foreground, the City of Pittsburgh in the background and this incredible rainbow that formed after a brief rain shower that caused the entire city in the background to present itself engulfed in this gold light…it is one of my favorite images I have ever captured, and I thank the Canon PowerShot S10 digital camera I had in my pocket that night for getting the shot…I was just in the right place at the right time, with camera in hand. I think it really portrays Pittsburgh, PA as a beautiful city, one that people admire and want to see and visit.
What is your FAVORITE IMAGE YOU HAVE POSTED to Flickr?
www.flickr.com/photos/btezra/13716414/in/set-275319/
It’s an image entitle “Best In Town”. It’s a photo I took many, many years ago when I was just starting my addiction to street portraiture and photography and one that I must say renders the most accurate image of a true Pittsburgher. As I state in the commentary, “Pittsburghers are a unique, indelible and unforgettable part of the city's makeup” And I believe this image does a fine job of revealing that blue collar, hard working and humble disposition that I believe is important for other people to know about Pittsburghers. I find myself logging into Fickr and heading to that image every now and then, just to keep it fresh in my memory and not to forget what I appreciate about photography.
Who are some of your Favorite photographers on Flickr? (provide links to them)
Joey, you are kidding me right, list them…that could take 10-15 pages…but I will do my best to name a few that I appreciate and never hesitate stopping by to see what they publish on Flickr…and in no particular order…
awfulsara - www.flickr.com/photos/awfulsara/
Tatiana Cardeal - www.flickr.com/photos/tatianacardeal/
Miles Storey - www.flickr.com/photos/mutephotoblog/
Valerie J. Cochran - www.flickr.com/photos/your_waitress/
José da Silva Pinto - www.flickr.com/photos/tonspi/
Anndra Dubhacan - www.flickr.com/photos/dubhacan/
Susan Burnstine - www.flickr.com/photos/susanb/
Gregory J. Smith - www.flickr.com/photos/beija-flor/
If you had to pick just one image, what is your favorite image by another photographer on flickr, currently?
Joey, you are killing me…LOL…ONE IMAGE…now that’s almost as easy as hitting the lotto…
How about I give you one set of images by José da Silva Pinto that I always find myself viewing when I need inspiration or feel as if I have no desire to pick up my camera and shoot images with it, how’s that”
www.flickr.com/photos/tonspi/sets/251148/
How has flickr influenced you?
It has really opened up my imagination to all that is possible w/ a camera in your hand. It has revealed to me so many cultures from all across the world, expanding my view and understanding of the world, that everything is global and without and boundaries. It has made me a better person and strengthens my love of people. It has exposed me to so many styles of photography that I appreciate all that I see and feel so open to try anything, anytime for any reason. Flickr has deepened the sense of community that truly exists amongst us shutterbugs. Flickr has enhanced the friendships I have now and the one I have begun because of the people I have met through the web site.
Now Lets talk about GEAR!!! What do you use? Lens, camera bodies?
Canon 10D, Canon 20D, Nikon D70, Nikon FM2, Nikon F4, and instamatic Kodak 110 film camera, Pentax K1000, Minolta DiMage 7 and a Canon PowerShot S10.
I have used every sort of Canon EF lens, own quite a few and have a stockpile of Nikon AF lenses and two Nikon digital lenses. I will be buying the Canon 5D soon, and buying a few new Canon EF L series lenses…but in my honest opinion (IMHO) it does not matter what kind of camera you use, how expensive the glass is you shoot with, what matters most is the subject matter in front of you, the moment, the setting, the desire to portray what you shoot as best as you can. I am not the most technically savy person when it comes to gear and such, just give me a camera, a roll of TMAX or a fresh CF card and let me do what I enjoy most.
What is your best setup for street photography, camera lens combo?
My everyday day walking around combo is the Canon 10D with either the Canon EF 28-105mm 3.5/4.5 USM lens of the Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L USM lens. I started using the Canon BG-ED3 battery grip so I never have to worry about losing battery power and the ease that it allows me to shoot vertical portraits. No flash either, I really do not like to shoot with a flash at all, it’s natural light for me, or a wicked fast lens in the low light.
What do you plan on showing at your Exposure?
I have printed 10 street portraits, 10 of what I consider my best street portraits. 10 faces that remain with me to this very day, 10 subjects I found to be unforgettable. 10 subjects who have a wealth of personality and prose to present in one portrait …and here’s a switch for me, they are all in color. The first time I have ever exhibited work that was all color and not one image in black & white. I’ll leave it at that, you’ll have to come to the opening and see for yourself what I have in store for your eye. I plan on writing a small bit of text explaining who the subject was and a bit about who they are and why I stopped to document their presence.
How much are you charging for your work? Will you be selling it as it is, or just matted and bagged?
Always a tough question to be asked…I will have for sale all the images on display, framed images that is, for $150.00. If someone wants just a matted/signed image which they can have framed on their own, I will sell those@ $75.00. But I must admit, I don’t expect them to fly off the wall, my photography is not for everyone, and it’s hardly something you’d mount in your living room for all your dinner guests to enjoy, or maybe they are…what’s important if you are going to purchase and image is that you are the kind of person who truly appreciates photography, that you find value in street portraiture and know that the person who shot them not only valued the subject but values the process involved in making the shot. You are not only investing in a photograph of mine you are investing in a piece of me…there’s a part of me in every image I shoot, every subject, every subject. That’s what you are going to get when you purchase one of my prints…not just a photo to hang on the wall.
*so bring your checkbooks!
Craig, I could go on and on, But I end here and save some questions for the show.
Now that you have been EXPOSED!!!
What do you think about Exposure?
Exposure has been one helluva experience, one helluva great experience for all the Pittsburgh Flickr faithful to take part in and to take pleasure in attending. I missed a couple, and regret not being able to attend, but I can assure you that your work in putting this together and building the momentum that you have has been appreciated 100% by me and by everyone from the Pittsburgh Flickr group of photographers/people. I have met some of the best damn people through not only the meet-ups but also through the Exposure shows at the Z:lounge, and I only want this experience to grow so big we need a new space, a larger space and for the Exposure events to bring more Pittsburgh people together, sharing in their love of photography and realizing the value in the friendships that have followed…I want to thank you Joey, and everyone in the Pittsburgh Flickr group for all that you shoot, all that you bring to the group, and your constant encouragement and comments, you are all an important piece of my existence, one I would not be willing to give up.
Image taken by Dean M. Beattie Thank you Dean You are the Man!
Polaroid 600 Business Edition camera, type 779 film (expired 2004)
This Polaroid was scanned with my new Epson 4490 scanner. I hope it looks good on your computer screen! :-| Let me know!
Every one wants to buy that Camera that makes them look GOOD ! some buy used, other pay the premium ! while the rest learn how to make the moments Happy ! It's an open discussion, that does not need all the answers asked or answered ! However there is a standard wayr to lock into, What makes the moment appealing for Every-ONE ! Of course also consider the Better lens also must be considered ! The history of this one had a previous owner, I did get a chance to look at and evaluate the Quality of the images, as well having the experience of post processing, got to evaluate the authenticity ! of the output ! from the monetary view, using an arbitrary Price figure, say$ 2,400 US, if there were 2400 photographs taken then sold for ONE dollar. some one else bought the camera for you !!! and of course $ 2.00 paid for twice as fast ! Digital is almost instant gratification, because you have the option while there and see the results, you handle the chore of not showing the ones that aren't showable ! or for sale. I'm always Smiling because I don't have to wait until someone else develops my efforts ! in addition My original 35 mm camera was $ 127.00 USA. now take that to the Camera store !! Enjoy the moment ! paul
“The capacity to deny oneself gratification cannot be confused with the denial of gratification imposed on us. The masses do not know the difference and therefore never cultivate a will of their own. They are subject to the pressures of the outside world, its punishments and validations. They confuse their own needs with what others tell them to need, and their personality is nullified in the process. That's what it means to be a sheep. And yet this is not as obvious as it seems. It may mean to work from home in a warm country while your neighbors party in the swimming pool. It also means having an entire beach to yourself while they are at work. Both situations demand that you question your sanity and challenge your character as a person. The masses will never do that. They are too weak.”
― Dan Desmarques
I needed a little dolly instant gratification, I had somehow completely forgotten that Pullipstyle was a Luts dealer and they had a small selection of Tiny Delfs in stock so this happened ^^;
I had bought a mohair wig for her unfortunately Tyltyl has a giant noggin, then I tried the pink wig on which I liked before find the Carrot which I LOVE LOVE!
This is the first in a retrospective series of older photographs of a younger Joni. . . . Joni has decided to dredge up photos from her past because she is currently on the D.L. and is not currently posting any new photos. Furthermore, Joni has noticed that many of the women on Flickr, are presently posting older photos of themselves, and in some instances ancient photos. So, it appears that there is an ongoing trend and Joni is a trendy girl. There is nothing wrong with that per se, although in some instances, women are trying to pawn off the older younger photos as current photos. I won't name any names, but they know who they are.
Joni is going to be up front about the age of these photos. The accompanying narratives will clearly state the date and circumstances of the photos in addition to the information about when it was uploaded and actually taken which is usually available for anyone's posted photo, but is so often overlooked. It always irks me when admirers salivate over photos that were taken years ago and don't realize that the babe they are drooling over doesn't exist any more; she's often ten years older and 25 pounds or more heavier! It's not quite that bad for Joni, but time does take its toll.
Almost all of the photos that Joni has selected for this series have all appeared in Joni's photostream in the past, and in most instances can still be found in Joni's photostream if one cares enough to look for them, but that would involve scrolling through hundreds of photos, and most admirers aren't that motivated. They are looking for instant gratification. So Joni has decided to appease them while teasing them as well. Furthermore, there are many new Flickr members, who didn't know or weren't around for Joni's younger years, so in a sense Joni is introducing herself to a whole new generation of Flickr viewers. Of course, there are probably some longtime Flickr admirers who may have seen these photos previously, but assuming they are as old as Joni, they are probably growing senile or worse, so Joni may be refreshing their recollection. . .Besides, Joni is sufficiently vain enough to admit she enjoys looking at her own photos and is probably her own biggest fan. . . .So on with the show. . . .
Joni remembers this one well. It was taken in a hotel room on Long Island in April of 2016 after a FemmeFever party. This original photo can still be found on the last page of her photostream. . . It doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but it is almost nine years old. Coming from New Jersey, Joni was a bit of an outsider travelling out to Nassau County for a TG party, but the FemmeFever monthly parties were fairly popular and well publicized then and Joni believes they are still around, although not necessarily in the same location.
FemmeFever is a group run by a genetic woman named Karen who also does makeovers, sells feminine merchandise, and is a photographer, among other things. Joni had attended maybe a half dozen of her parties over the years. There was usually a $10 cover charge, but there was usually decent food and music supplied by a DJ with plenty of tables and chairs with ample room for dancing. Of course, there was a cash bar and a number of local admirers, whom I believe were screened to assure safety. Basically, these were well organized T-Girl parties.
This was the only time that Joni had rented a hotel room. It would usually take Joni over two hours to drive through rush hour traffic in NYC to get there, but only a little more than an hour to get back home to New Jersey in the early morning hours, but in this instance Joni had earned a free room through her credit card, which she was cashing in.
At this particular party, Joni met another T-Girl who was also from New Jersey and hailed from down the Jersey Shore, but Joni doesn't remember her name. She was relatively new to going out at that time, whereas Joni had nearly 20 years of occasional experience by that time. At the end of the night, after having conversed with each other for about an hour, Joni invited the other T-Girl back to her hotel room for a nightcap, but the other girl suggested that they go to her room which was located in the hotel recommended by FemmeFever which had also reserved a block of rooms for those attending the party. There was also supposed to be an "after party" somewhere in that hotel, but that never materialized. So Joni repaired to the other girl's room, which was a shame because it was a dump. Joni's room was much larger and nicer, but a few miles more distant from the party venue than the recommended hotel.
Despite the room, the two girls had a good time together. The other girl used Joni's old non-digital 35mm camera to take about a half dozen photos of Joni fully dressed in various poses. Joni naturally reciprocated and stayed for about two hours before returning to her own hotel. Basically, the two girls passed the time in the manner one would expect a pair of semi-horny T-Girls to interact with each other in a hotel room. It wasn't too long before Joni's sinfully red dress was removed. Things got passionate as there was lots of kissing, hugging, and fondling of each other, but no one was impregnated.
At the end of the night, emails were exchanged, but sadly, Joni never heard from the girl again. . . . But it was a fun night and a pleasant memory!
When it was first uploaded onto Flickr years ago, this photo was only placed in two groups. It will be in far more groups this time. It will be interesting to see how many views it generates this time.
"We're Here" • "David Bowie" (breaking the hereios rules in true Bowie fashion)
One of many celebrations of David Bowie's life and music. This at our local watering hole Duffy's Tavern.
I found myself so angry this morning while reading people’s excuses for using Ai. So many people stating they use it to do creative tasks because they’re “not ✨talented✨ like the rest of us.”
I stand behind the idea that with most people whose work you appreciate, it’s not a matter of raw talent blessed to them by the gods. It’s WORK. It’s pure drive, effort, stupidity, and the willingness to do things over and over no matter how bad your results may be until slowly they’re not so bad anymore.
I am so tired of seeing Ai and thinking about it, let alone hearing lazy people (and I mean this with as little harshness as I can manage, people are being made lazier by the day by these sorts of things) make excuses why it’s ok for them to not try and to just get a dopamine hit from that social media like/favorite.
I spend so much time practicing in different photography conditions, trying different settings on my camera, & experimenting with techniques. I am not just naturally talented, although I know I have an eye for composition/framing. (Which, again, as evidenced from my film scan of a 1995 sunset & powerlines sky photo I recently posted… I’VE HAD TO PRACTICE AT FOR YEARS.) The same goes for my illustrating, my sewing, my style/fashion projects, my writing, and my small forays into music making.
I am a creative person who tries everything and does their best to hone various skills so I can best combine all facets of my creativity to create multi-media art. Sometimes that means YouTube videos, sometimes that means collage work, and sometimes that means doing styling/hair/makeup, setting up a scene, photographing it, creatively editing it, and making a collage from all of that or illustrating digitally over my images.
None of it is just raw unfiltered natural talent, it’s skill borne by constantly making bad art, taking bad photos, and writing shitty songs or stories.
The entitlement behind these excuses is infuriating. The more I see people lean into instant gratification demands instead of just being new to something and learning, the more I worry about the fate of people’s mental states. I know it’s disheartening to want to “be a great photographer/illustrator/writer” and start in at it and not instantly be applauded for how earth shattering your work is, but know that the people you admire have been putting in the work.
Some mornings I go out to practice night photography and I’m being lazy. I don’t want to take the tripod or use my remote and on those mornings I come back with nothing to share because I took a bunch of blurry grainy photos. Sometimes there is nothing to come of a photo session/walk but a learning experience and I am frustrated but grateful every time.
I took 3x as many shots this morning than you’re seeing here but this is all that came out even semi-acceptable for me because I didn’t want to dig out my remote and the settings I was using meant every little wobble, no matter how imperceptible, caused blurriness.
Please, when you have someone in your life who is destroying the very planet we live on, the only one we have, and lining the pockets of the corrupt ultra wealthy who run these scam Ai sites to “make art,” sit them down and talk to them. Lead them away from it.
Talk openly about your struggles as a creative, show the work that goes into taking your photos that people love. Be transparent and helpful to people who are interested in getting started and please, never ever play it off as just “natural talent.”
Seattle, WA
7 exposures
Fotokemika Varycon PE RC paper, variable contrast, matte - used as paper negative.
Exposure: 45 seconds
Shot with custom large format pinhole camera designed and built in collaboration with master camera maker Kurt Mottweiler.
Ah, the joys of shooting in film, otherwise known as delayed gratification. Weeks go by before I burn up a roll, then another week or so before it gets developed, and the "Oh yeah..." moment of trying to remember the particulars of each shot.
This was north of Wasilla, AK at a fireworks stand. I was so glad I had the Holga with me, it's made for shots like this.
Dark earlier
Copyright 2005 Ron Diorio
Three shows: London and New York (2x)
October 7-30 I will be one of five artists in a group show.
Positive Focus Gallery: Soul Witness
(selections from Anytown)
111 Front Street
Gallery #215
DUMBO, Brooklyn
positivefocus.org/Shows/soul_witness/diorio/index.html
I will be at the Gallery Oct 14-16 and Oct 23 showing additional work as part of the Art under the bridge Festival and Open Studio weekends.
Extended through October 17th!
Anytown (Solo show)
The Economist Tower
26 St. James's Street
London SW1A 1HG
Download the Anytown PDF
I will be participating in:
BLOGS: An exhibition of photoblogs
NYC Exposition, Puerto Rico Sun, and East Harlem.
October 14 – November 26, 2005
Viewing: Tuesday – Saturday, 3PM – 7PM
The contributor's were asked to answer some questions......
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Tell me a little bit about you.
Ron Diorio (av_producer) in Manhattan for life.
Why do you enjoy photography?
My old Nikon FM collects dust on my dresser becuase the digital darkroom transformed what I had come to know as photography. It moved me from picture taking to image making. Now the only real "photographic" moment is the end stage of the manufacturing process when a Digital C-print is pulled. For me it has been important to have the "photographic" in the making of the object while disregarding the "photographic" in the image making process. So in a traditional sense, for me, there's not much photography to enjoy.
What I do enjoy is where image making intersects with storytelling - you frame the world - frame a point of view. In some ways "view finder" better describes what it is. The really emancipating thing has been to find/seek/uncover the authentic - the essence of the emotional connection in the image without the "view" being my truth or something close to me. I'm always chasing that both in my own work and when I'm looking at other's work.
What's your photo style, technique...?
When I first posted on Fotolog in June 2003, I called my page "A photographic imagination". I had just read Sontag's On Photography and I wanted to put a marker down that these images should not be viewed as documents - they were manipulated and as such the images were not representative but representational.
I was also beginning to undestand how pixel based display was a great democratizer - all these screen images were made of the same substance. A Picasso painting, a DaVinci drawing, a deep space image form the Hubble Telescope or an Ansel Adams photograph were certainly different objects in the real world but on the screen they were just a collection of pixels. The playing field was leveled, the image content would be judged on it's own aesthetic and against every other image that could be displayed. The eye would decide.
From the start I wanted to give people something to think about - but not as a message or a lesson or a meaning. I think I lacked the confidence to articulate that early on. But it is there like the manipulation is as part of my whole apporach. I want the viewer active to "look into the image" rather than just looking at the image.
What camera do you use?
I am not an equipment geek. If the device captures images without a flash, has a memory card I can read and a charged battery I'd probably use it. I don't need a perfect capture, I want to make a capture perfect.
Why do you share you photoblog on flickr?
I use Flickr to publish my images because Fotolog crapped out so many times it wasn't worth the aggravation anymore. Both Flickr and Fotolog are distribution points and provide a publication platform and an audience. I want an audience. Of course this serves two masters because I can move easliy from presenter to an audience to being part of the audience.
What about it do you like?
At the point where I was searching for a way of working - first Fotolog and then Flickr gave me a daily production and publishing structure and a format to see a body of work developing.
It allows me to be prolific without purpose and organically find threads in the work. The dark side is that there is such a need to get the next image - almost an obligation. I realize this is a product of my own need for immediate gratification. I tend to ration the published images to one per day. The sheer volume of images posted on both of these services is a stark reminder of how insignificant any single image can be. It is quite intimidating.
I am always surprised by what people connect to in an individual image, what they are moved by. I am starting to sense a bond. It is not just that I said something nice about their picture or made them a contact so they'll say something nice about mine. There is something we have in common, something they know and I know.
Why did you want to take part in the NYC Exposition?
I read Dylan's Chronicles earlier in the year and just saw Scorcese's "Don't look back" yesterday and "California Dreaming" earlier this week. Aside from their specific topics of Dylan and the Mammas and the Pappas they documented the NY Folk scene in the early 60's. The creativity and mutual influences that so many of those artists had on each other strikes a similar chord to those of us who have watched each other's work over the last two years on Fotolog and Flickr. I see this as a festival of those visual efforts and would feel I missed something important if I weren't participating. Also with some of my favorites already participating I feel fortunate to have the honor of our work sitting together.
Coming off three traditional exhibitions of my "Anytown" series, I look forward to presenting some work from a new collection in its original digital format.
Anymore about you that I didn't ask.
This essay was published recently about "Anytown" and may be of interest.
taken by my daughter
Built in 1906 and unveiled in 1907.
Queen Victoria stands on a tall pedestal facing South, "looking a little pensively over the square," according to Nikolaus Pevsner.
The South Frieze
The frieze on the south face of the monument depicts twelve Victorian politicians and statesmen. They are, from left to right:
"Derby" is Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (1799–1869) Prime minister
"Aberdeen" is George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784–1860) Prime minister
"Russell" is John Russell, 1st Earl Russell John Russell, first Earl Russell (1792–1878) Prime minister and author
"Peel" is Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet (1788–1850) Prime minister
"Salisbury" is Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) Prime minister
"Beaconsfield" is Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1804–1881) Prime minister and novelist
"Gladstone" is William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) Prime minister and author
"Palmerston" is Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) Prime minister
"Rosebery" is Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) Prime Minister
"Melbourne" is William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) Prime minister
"Bright" is John Bright (1811–1889) Politician
"Cobden" is Richard Cobden (1804–1865) Manufacturer and politician.
"The Queen Victoria Memorial
This Monument, which forms the centrepiece to Dalton Square in Lancaster, creates considerable interest. Many people want to know who the figures at the base of the Monument represent and why they are there. The Queen Victoria Monument was erected the 13th June 1906, but interestingly without a ceremony. It was paid for by Lord Ashton, who lived at Rylands house and owned huge textile and linoleum interests in Lancaster down by the River Lune on New Quay. The Monument itself was originally intended to stand in Williamson Park, but with having the the plans drawn up to build the Ashton Memorial there and the plans for a new Town Hall situated opposite Dalton Square, the plans changed and it was instead erected in the centre of the square.
Together with the balustrade and laying out of the oval, it cost a total of £14,000. The monument was designed and sculpted by Herbert Hampton who with this, produced a number of Royal Monuments including one which stands in Ipswich, two which stand in India and another in New Zealand. The sculptures which stand as part of the Monument in Dalton Square are made of bronze with the pedestal being granite and the base being made of Furness limestone.
There is no evidence to say why Lord Ashton felt it was needed to erect a Monument of Victoria, 6 years after her passing. Perhaps he felt that even though he moved into the Edwardian era, he still portrayed Victorian morals and felt a little out of image when compared with that of an Edwardian.
All together there are 52 figures which surround the base of the Monument, with 50 being men and the other two women. They each represent eminent Victorians and illiterate Politics, Science, the Arts, Education and the Church. On the corners stand figures representing Truth, Wisdom, Justice and Freedom. Key names include the likes of James Williamson Snr, the Father of Lord Ashton, although his eminence is probably somewhat less than the others which stand around the Monument."
"Did you know that Queen Victoria visited Lancaster on the 8th October 1851?
A detailed account of her visit was published in The Lancaster Gazette and subsequently published as a book in 1877. According to these sources, Queen Victoria was accompanied by Prince Albert and four of her children to our town. They had been spending time in Balmoral as a family and had made provisions to stop in Lancaster ahead of their return to London.
Their short tour of Lancaster began at Castle Station (now Lancaster Railway Station), before proceeding to Meeting-House Lane and then onto the Castle. A great display of arches, flags and streamers is described in contemporary accounts, with the writer also noting the glorious sunshine experienced by all that day.
“A beautiful spectacle it was to see the cortege filing over the railway bridge, and more interesting to see the sovereign passing through a dense mass of loyal subjects, all excited to the highest gratification by beholding their Queen face to face.”
As part of her visit, Her Majesty was presented with the keys to Lancaster Castle by William Hulton, the then constable of the castle. Following this, she was led to the Shire Hall, which had been transformed with help from the Gillow company in preparation for Victoria’s arrival. Chairmen of the quarter sessions were present here to speak with her majesty about their work and an address was made by Mayor Henry Gregson to which Victoria replied, “I have received with much pleasure the address which has been just read to me and have been much gratified by the kind reception which I have met with in the town."
Following this, the Royal party were led to the Grand Jury Room where they were presented with an elaborate luncheon which had been prepared at the King's Arms Royal Hotel. The Queen and her companions left Lancaster shortly after at around 3pm."
Lancaster City Museum.
Sad to say, but we've reached the end of the Polaroid portraits from Analog's Pulse: A Weekend in Cleveland. It was a fantastic time, filled with film, friends, more film, and beautiful scenery.
www.flickr.com/groups/analogclev/
After a super-hot, sunny afternoon shooting slide film during the Cross Process Walk, it was time yet again to bust out the SLR 680 for some Polaroid portraits. If the above isn't any indication, Analog's Pulse had easily the best ratio of female to male film shooters; attendance was split right down the middle, opposed to the 10 to 1 ratio typically seen in film photography events.
Polaroid SLR 680
Polaroid 779 film, Expired 03/09
Exposure dial set to +1
Flash Disabled
The photo is the menu for day one, minus the adult refreshments.
Now, for the challenging story....
As I got older I switched from eating three meals a day to two, and I like to start with a light breakfast and then eat a big meal in the evening, with a small snack in the afternoon and evening if I get hungry then. I’m a night person who is sluggish in the morning so I like to start with some caffeine. I don’t like coffee or tea much, so the caffeine is supplied by Coca-Cola, much to the dismay of everyone who knows anything about nutrition. Since my blood pressure is in the pre-hypertension region, I purposely try to limit my salt intake so I can avoid taking blood pressure medications. My cholesterol and blood sugar numbers are normal. I’m 57 years old, six foot, three inches tall, weigh 185 pounds and usually run four miles on the treadmill at the Y every other day, which takes me about 34 minutes.
Basically, I don’t know anything about nutrition and have never studied the subject or been interested in it. However, I do have some experience relevant to this challenge, which is backpacking. When you go on the trail for a week in a wilderness area, you have to carefully plan what you will bring and I used to do calorie counts to make sure I carried enough food without any extra. That knowledge came in handy for this exercise. I didn’t do a calorie count before I bought my food for this week-long challenge, but I knew which foods pack a lot of calories for the money, starting with rice. I suppose being a typical starving college student when I was in grad school also helped with knowing which foods have the most bang for the buck.
I began day one with my usual breakfast of whole grain shredded wheat and milk, with 12 ounces of Coke, or as I like to call it, Breakfast of Champions. I got hungry in the afternoon and ate a banana before heading out for my sunset photowalk. I decided I’d start off my big evening meal with rice mixed with carrots and peas. I thought the sausage would be good for giving it some flavor, kind of a pork-fried rice dish. I hadn’t made rice in a while, so I fumbled around with the directions for my rice cooker. I didn’t know how much to cook, so I settled on 1 cup of dried rice.
Anyway, the cooking went fine, which is something of an accomplishment for me as I am not known as much of a cook, being mostly famous in my family for using the garbage disposal to distribute potato peelings to every part of the kitchen at my mom’s house while I was entrusted with making mashed potatoes for a holiday meal. My family decided peeling potatoes exceeded my core competency and that it would be best if I just contributed drinks on festive holidays. In any case, I don’t like to spend more than ten minutes in food preparation. I found out 1 cup of rice is too much – next time I’ll cut it down to ¾ cup. The food was bland, so I purchased thirteen cents of Tabasco sauce from my house stores to liven it up.
I finished off the meal with half the can of pears. I bought the Kroger “value” pears and was very pleasantly surprised how good they tasted. I started eating canned fruit a few years ago because much of the fresh fruit these days looks perfect in the store but tastes like Chet when you get it home. For the canned fruit they can wait for it to get ripe on the tree, unlike fresh fruit where it usually has to be picked somewhat unripe to allow for shipping. The exception is local seasonal fresh fruit that I like to buy. Anyway, it was a good discovery and I’ll be putting the Kroger “value” pears in my shopping cart often in the future.
Late in the evening I like to enjoy some adult beverages which cannot be purchased with food stamps. I traded off the calories of some beer for six cookies on the first day of the challenge, but decided that was violating the spirit of the thing, so I slapped my wrist and decided to abstain from alcohol for the rest of the week as Mayor Booker is doing. All in all the first day of the challenge went well with 2476 calories consumed at a cost of $3.82 plus tax.
On the second day of the challenge I repeated the Breakfast of Champions. I had eaten a bit too much rice the first day so wasn’t hungry in the afternoon. I went for a run on the treadmill at the Y in the evening, running 4 miles and walking 2 more afterwards, for a 750 calorie workout according to the treadmill. By the time I got home I was hungry and ate a banana while I cooked a four-egg cheese omelet. Once again I purchased thirteen cents worth of house Tobasco sauce to spice it up. God bless those Avery Island Cajuns. I was still hungry and wolfed down the juicy leftover pears.
I went to work on my computer for a while and was still hungry, so I decided to cook the second half of the bag of frozen peas and carrots. I have not eaten peas and carrots for a long time, remembering with a full measure of disgust those mushy awful canned peas and carrots they tried with very little success to get us to eat in the grade school cafeteria. I was surprised at how good the frozen peas and carrots tasted, even a little bit sweet. I eat a bag of fresh carrots with sugar snap peas for a snack once in a while, and the frozen peas and carrots were just as good at about a quarter of the price. I’m putting frozen peas and carrots on my grocery list for the future. I’m betting that if I thaw them without cooking them they will make a good snack. So there’s another discovery – skip the canned vegetables and always get fresh or frozen ones instead. And if money is a concern, the frozen veggies are very comparable to the taste of fresh ones at a fraction of the cost.
After two days I had enough deferred gratification and could no longer resist opening the bag of cookies. I enjoyed four chewy chocolate chip cookies as a bedtime snack. Tasty. I’m so glad I stepped up one notch from the “value” chocolate chip cookies, paying $1.99 instead of $1.39 for a pound. The calorie count for day two was 1936 for a cost of $3.91 plus tax.
The fun thing about flickr is there are so many knowledgeable people out there. My long-time flickr friend Pam (who goes by Pavonne) is a nutritionist out in California. She went through the trouble to calculate the nutrients in my collection of groceries and made some observations. I am a bit low on the amount of fiber, high on calories for a “senior citizen” (haha, thanks Pam, though I am eternally grateful for the senior discount at the liquor store I still toss everything I get from AARP), OK on total fat but above the limit for saturated fat and have too much sugar. I am also somewhat above the limit of 1500 mg of sodium for those who are hypertensive. She has some recommendations for me and it will be interesting to see if I can make adjustments to not only buy food I like for $30 a week but also to meet nutritional guidelines. Thanks so much Pam.
Pam is a big fan of gardening at home to add fresh fruits and vegetables to people’s diet. See, I plugged it even though I may be sticking to the grocery store myself… :-)
Anyway, it’s time to cook. I’ve never cooked a whole chicken before so the success of the challenge hangs in the balance. Fortunately, the fire department is only a half mile away in case of a burning bird or other culinary catastrophe.
Alas, the flash on my camera failed so I can’t show photos of my evening meals.
Thanks to all who commented on my previous post – I added some responses to your observations there that you might wish to read. Observations and comments on this post are most welcome. I have the best flickr friends!
Casbah Sadomasochism Fetish Club Philadelphia 1994
Sadomasochism, a subset of BDSM, is the giving or receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. Wikipedia
I loved the color of the sky for background in this portrait of the female Bald Eagle heading towards her fishing perch.
Judging from the "new photo experience" Flickr is planning, multiple photos and group participation will be further discouraged. I hope the instant gratification cell phone users enjoy taking over Flickr in place of the "rhinos" who enjoyed carrying on a conversation with friends over a cup of coffee and that day's posts and news. To me 8,000 views mean nothing to me compared to just one "Hello" from a good friend in the morning.
cologne - 27.11.2013
Today there was parents evening in Antony's school. We talked with different teachers about the situation in the class and we got some very useful hints for the future. Nevertheless, beside the lectureship school is also a kind of punishment and gratification institution which is very disputable. Everything is aligned to boost the self-confidence not the feeling of self-worth of a human being... but this is only my humble opinion and nothing more. Thanks folks for following my s**t on flickr.
Still fond memories of yore. A time of pen-to-paper in order to send a letter to someone, or a way of communicating and given time, from one Capital city, to another Stare Capital, your letter arrived in perhaps two or three weeks. Now it is down to three or four days max. But who writes anymore, for we have instant gratification via the internet. Patience and hopeful expectations have flown out of the window and it is all of the now that fills our lives in almost everything.
We post a photo and before the ink has dried, there are comments and responses awaiting our expected desires.
A little further afield, deep space, it is the same tale so I have included a time frame of receiving a voice message from …….
Earth-Moon370,300 km 1.3 seconds
Earth-Mars401 million km. 3 - 21 minutes
Earth-Jupiter580 million km 33 - 53 minutes
Earth-Pluto~5800 million km 5 hours
Earth-Nearest Star~9.5 million, million km 4 years.
Far too much for me to get my head around so I think I should pour myself a drink and wander off into the garden, where things change at a much slower pace and only from Season to Season.
Cheers!
And to Each Season.... Rod McKuen
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtfMZsH9lL0&list=RDQtfMZsH9lL0
The obvious truth within the poem, that became a song, is that Rod was alway honest in what he was and what he felt. A song about his inner thoughts on being gay and what touched him and filled his heart.
What a most beautiful sole he was.
i do not condone or wish to promote the actions of these evil bastards
A serial killer is typically defined as an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time (a "cooling off period") between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification. Other sources define the term as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone" or, including the vital characteristics, a minimum of at least two murders. Often, a sexual element is involved with the killings, but the FBI states that motives for serial murder include "anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking." The murders may have been attempted or completed in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common; for example, occupation, race, appearance, sex, or age group.
Serial killers are not the same as mass murderers, who commit multiple murders at one time; nor are they spree killers, who commit murders in two or more locations with virtually no break in between.
The full extent of Brady and Hindley's killing spree did not come to light until their confessions in 1985, as both had until then maintained their innocence. Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley's who disappeared on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton on 12 July 1963. That evening, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to "commit his perfect murder". He told her to drive her van around the local area while he followed behind on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight, and Hindley was to stop and offer that person a lift.
Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a young girl walking towards them, and signalled Hindley to stop, which she did not do until she had passed the girl. Brady drew up alongside on his motorbike, demanding to know why she had not offered the girl a lift, to which Hindley replied that she recognised her as Marie Ruck, a near neighbour of her mother. Shortly after 8:00 pm, continuing down Froxmer Street, Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high-heeled shoes walking away from them, and once again signalled for the van to stop. Hindley recognised the girl as Pauline Reade, a friend of her younger sister, Maureen. Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a seven or eight-year-old child. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about 30 minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying, her throat cut. He told her to stay with Reade while he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby on a previous visit to the moor, to bury the body. Hindley noticed that "Pauline's coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray ... She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her." Returning home from the moor in the van—they had loaded the motorcycle into the back—Brady and Hindley passed Reade's mother, Joan, accompanied by her son, Paul, searching the streets for Pauline.
Accompanied by Brady, Hindley approached twelve-year-old John Kilbride in the early evening of 23 November 1963 at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and offered him a lift home on the pretext that his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the added inducement of a proffered bottle of sherry, Kilbride readily agreed to get into the Ford Anglia car that Hindley had hired. Brady told Kilbride that the sherry was at their home, and they would have to make a detour to collect it. On the way he suggested that they take another detour, to search for a glove he said that Hindley had lost on the moor. When they reached the moor Brady took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before fatally strangling him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace.
Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett vanished on his way to his grandmother's house in Longsight during the early evening of 16 June 1964, four days after his birthday. Hindley lured him into her Mini pick-up—which Brady was sitting in the back of—by asking for the boy's help in loading some boxes, after which she said she would drive him home. She drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor as she and Brady had previously arranged, and Brady went off with Bennett, supposedly looking for a lost glove. Hindley kept watch, and after about 30 minutes or so Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade that he had hidden there earlier. When Hindley asked how he had killed Bennett, Brady said that he had sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him with a piece of string.
Brady and Hindley visited a fairground on 26 December 1964 in search of another victim, and noticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey standing beside one of the rides. When it became apparent that she was on her own, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of the shopping they were carrying close to her, before asking for the girl's help to carry some of the packages to their car, and then to their home. Once inside the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed, perhaps strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned. In Dr. Chris Cowley's book "Face to Face with Evil: Conversations with Ian Brady", Brady states that it was Hindley who killed Lesley Ann Downey. The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey's body to Saddleworth Moor, where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.
On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, where Brady beat him to death with an axe.
I found myself so angry this morning while reading people’s excuses for using Ai. So many people stating they use it to do creative tasks because they’re “not ✨talented✨ like the rest of us.”
I stand behind the idea that with most people whose work you appreciate, it’s not a matter of raw talent blessed to them by the gods. It’s WORK. It’s pure drive, effort, stupidity, and the willingness to do things over and over no matter how bad your results may be until slowly they’re not so bad anymore.
I am so tired of seeing Ai and thinking about it, let alone hearing lazy people (and I mean this with as little harshness as I can manage, people are being made lazier by the day by these sorts of things) make excuses why it’s ok for them to not try and to just get a dopamine hit from that social media like/favorite.
I spend so much time practicing in different photography conditions, trying different settings on my camera, & experimenting with techniques. I am not just naturally talented, although I know I have an eye for composition/framing. (Which, again, as evidenced from my film scan of a 1995 sunset & powerlines sky photo I recently posted… I’VE HAD TO PRACTICE AT FOR YEARS.) The same goes for my illustrating, my sewing, my style/fashion projects, my writing, and my small forays into music making.
I am a creative person who tries everything and does their best to hone various skills so I can best combine all facets of my creativity to create multi-media art. Sometimes that means YouTube videos, sometimes that means collage work, and sometimes that means doing styling/hair/makeup, setting up a scene, photographing it, creatively editing it, and making a collage from all of that or illustrating digitally over my images.
None of it is just raw unfiltered natural talent, it’s skill borne by constantly making bad art, taking bad photos, and writing shitty songs or stories.
The entitlement behind these excuses is infuriating. The more I see people lean into instant gratification demands instead of just being new to something and learning, the more I worry about the fate of people’s mental states. I know it’s disheartening to want to “be a great photographer/illustrator/writer” and start in at it and not instantly be applauded for how earth shattering your work is, but know that the people you admire have been putting in the work.
Some mornings I go out to practice night photography and I’m being lazy. I don’t want to take the tripod or use my remote and on those mornings I come back with nothing to share because I took a bunch of blurry grainy photos. Sometimes there is nothing to come of a photo session/walk but a learning experience and I am frustrated but grateful every time.
I took 3x as many shots this morning than you’re seeing here but this is all that came out even semi-acceptable for me because I didn’t want to dig out my remote and the settings I was using meant every little wobble, no matter how imperceptible, caused blurriness.
Please, when you have someone in your life who is destroying the very planet we live on, the only one we have, and lining the pockets of the corrupt ultra wealthy who run these scam Ai sites to “make art,” sit them down and talk to them. Lead them away from it.
Talk openly about your struggles as a creative, show the work that goes into taking your photos that people love. Be transparent and helpful to people who are interested in getting started and please, never ever play it off as just “natural talent.”
When God calls someone to follow Him, He frequently sends them through times in the “wilderness.” Right after God first put into Moses a vision to see Israel led out of slavery, He exiled him into the wilderness for forty years to herd sheep. Only after a long, silent, four decades, did God finally appear to him in the burning bush with the command to go. Can you imagine what kind of despairing, “God, where are you?” conversations Moses must have had with God during those forty silent years?
Or consider the story of David. After being anointed as future king of Israel by Samuel, what was David’s next move? Did he...
... go straight to the palace to try on robes?
... immediately confront Goliath?
... get billed as one of the “sexiest men alive” in Israelites Today magazine?
None of the above. First Samuel 16 tells us he went straight back to the pasture to tend the sheep. When David encounters Goliath, he’s in between sheep-care and crackers-and-cheese runs for his brothers (1 Samuel 17:15). Samuel had anointed David as king in 1 Samuel 16:13. This means David went from being named “future king” and “man after God’s own heart” by the most famous prophet alive to “field hand shoveling sheep dung” and “Cheeze-It boy” for his big brothers.
Right after the conclusion of the last verse in the story of David’s anointing (1 Samuel 16:13), my Bible has a white space, and the author moves on to something else happening at a different place in Israel. In that white space is where David went back to the pasture. The space between the call of God and the fulfillment of the dream. Nothing is written there, for David or for us, and I’m sure it felt terribly confusing for David.
Are you in a white space right now?
White spaces are typically the hardest parts of life to endure: The white space of silence; the white space of singleness; the white space of sickness; the white space of finishing out a prison sentence; the white space of unfulfilled promises and unmet expectations.
How many times must Joseph — sold by his brothers into slavery, falsely accused of adultery with his master’s wife, overlooked for parole by the magistrates — have called out to God, “Where are you?”
After Jesus called Paul to be his apostle on the Damascus Road, Paul wandered in the desert for three years and suffered obscurity for another fourteen (Galatians 1:17-19; Galatians 2:1). Paul endured seventeen years in the background before he was appointed by the Church as a missionary (Acts 13:2)!
After Mary became pregnant with the Messiah, God waited for several months to tell her fiancé, Joseph, about the miraculous conception. Why did God wait? During that delay, Joseph (naturally) assumed she had cheated on him (I mean, what else could you assume?). This means that for several months, Mary had to go through the humiliation of pregnancy alone with everyone, even her beloved fiancé, assuming she was a cheater. God chose to do it that way. Why? Why did He wait so long to tell Joseph? Why the “white space”?
Why does God sometimes leave us feeling alone, deserted, humiliated, abandoned — like we are in darkness, like He doesn’t care — as though He’s abandoned us altogether? Why is the only sound we hear at those times the echo of a door slammed in our faces?
I don’t know the full answer, but I know that part of it has to do with the fact that He wants us to walk by faith, not by sight; and walking by faith means sometimes pressing on when we can’t feel or see Him.
God sanctifies us by humbling us.
He works His salvation out in us by taking us through the valley of the cross, which often means feeling alone and abandoned. This may be why God didn’t tell Joseph His plans for Mary at first; He wanted Mary to feel the shame of the cross. Moses had to endure the wilderness of isolation. Paul had to learn to suffer (Acts 9:15; 2 Corinthians 11:24-27).
In reality, we most certainly are not alone during these dark times, but walking by faith means believing that we are not alone even when we can’t feel the warmth of God’s presence.
Another reason God often leads us through dark, silent valleys is that He wants to purify our hearts. Why do we want to be close to God? Is it because of what He gives us, or is it simply because we want Him?
What is more valuable to us: God or His blessings?
Sometimes God withholds everything from us except His promises in order to make us ask ourselves, “Is this — His promise — enough for me?”
You can never know that Jesus is all that you need, you see, until He’s all that you have.
So let me ask you a very important question, one that the survival of your faith depends on. Can you walk by faith in God’s promises alone, even when you can’t see or feel anything? Can you delay gratification, even the gratification of “feeling” the Spirit?
When You Can't Feel God
by J.D. Greear
A quick-to-make display for our junior high students using photos of books with annotations paper-clipped to file folders and a couple of centrepiece signs made from dollar store foam bags, bandanas, and simple printed signs adhered to sticks.
I didn’t pull books for the display, but left them shelved for students to hunt down. Having books for students to grab from the display is great, but our students sometimes need to have a little less “instant gratification” and learn how to find books shelved by the author’s last name. It also helps them learn to browse the shelves and have their attention captured by books they may not notice otherwise.
I realized after the fact that the little bubbles under the big thought bubble look like caterpillars hanging down, but it’s supposed to be a short-lived display so I’m hopeful no one will notice! :)
A bibliography is available at www.squidoo.com/thought-provoking